Solar Charging

[theoldmancunian]

I'm thinking of getting some form of solar panel to keep the battery/batteries on my 2008 Cali charged up. It's not always possible to guarantee electrical hook-up when travelling round Europe and we sometimes find ourselves staying a few days in one place without moving the van. Generally our need for electricity isn't great when on site but there's always a call for phones, iPad or DVD players to be charged up!

I'm torn between a small dashboard-mounted (and inexpensive) job and something bigger mounted on the roof.

Has anyone got any experience of the two, who could share their thoughts ab out the pros and cons?

 

[Andy]

Checkout this page for a complete panel on the roof system

http://tim28.web.officelive.com/solar.aspx

 

[jerrythegerman]

I've looked into this.

Those very tiny (around A4) ones are ok for keeping a charged battery topped up but if you put any demand on it (fridge, TV and so on) forget it.

Ideally you need something along the line's of a 85-120w unit but these are not that small. Roof mount to be happy or maybe a bike rack (but to get the best from it you would need to keep it sun wise, though it would charge anyway, just less).

Get one with a diode in it so that you dont actually loose charge when it gets darker (cheap ones dont always have them), even those will ony give out a couple of amps tops on a good day.

I was in a RV place yesterday and he was having fitted 4 of the above to enable him to run his fridge and TV and the like. May not be a green PC, but at that cost your well on the way to a Honda generator and those i1's/i2's are super quiet.

I have a tiny Honda Ex550 (old stuff now), but it's not much bigger than a shoe box and I use that every couple of days for a few hours to keep us topped up.

It runs forever on a ltr of 2 stroke and is so quite you forget about it!!

 

[Martin]

The 13W Solar briefcase's are back on offer at Maplins again for £49.99, I know quite a few motorhomers who used these and they performed quite well and fold down very neatly. They are ideal for just keeping keeping the leisure batteries topped up.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/13w-solar-briefcase-99760

If however you are using TV's and have the fridge on full power etc .. you will need something a bit bigger as Jerry described.

 

[theoldmancunian]

Many thanks for the replies.
I hadn't thought about having a separate generator but I suspect that may not be the right option for us. (With kids, my daughter's wheelchair and occasionally dogs to lug stuff around for, space is at a premium.)
You've pretty well confirmed what I suspected - that a roof-mounted panel is the best solution. I assume they can be fitted so that any wiring takes into account the raising of the roof. (Thanks for the hint about looking for one with a diode. I didn't know about such things.)